All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor
by Northman Maille
Summary: My entry for the 'Age of Eric' contest.  Eric has a 'flashback' of sorts about his struggle to return to Europe after a stay in America,  and how the mode of transport he chose was almost the final death of him.  Vampire Eric stars.


The Age of Eric Contest

Time period; Victorian

Disclaimer; I do not own the character of Eric (or Pam & Sookie for that matter) but I really would like to, not to make any money, just to keep him around and cuddle him. All three of these characters belong to Charlaine Harris.

With great thanks to by wonderful beta Northwoman. She constantly tries to make me use ';' properly but so far I have resisted. She takes a lump of words and turns them into something readable. She rocks my socks. Also thanks to Elbly for her help with the plot, we call her the bean feeder

And so on with the show...

**All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor**

The little Viking ship sailed on a sea of blue and grey glass, its sail in perfect condition and billowing out into a wind that wasn't there.

Eric had been given the ship in the bottle by Sookie when they took their vacation in Scandinavia. The trip had been a birthday gift from Pam and he loved to look at all the pictures they took there; it was one of the happiest times of his long life.

Currently he was waiting for a vampire who wished to move into his area to come into Fangtasia and see him; he wished the male would come early so that he could get home to Sookie. Looking at the little ship he pictured her face on the day she gave it to him, the North Sea was at her back and she looked so beautiful with her hair whipping around in the wind...Eric had always loved the smell of the sea, since he was a small boy.

November 1872

Eric watched as the ship was readied for departure amongst the squalid surroundings of the East River Dock. He had been in the New World for several years, ever since he had brought Pam there after her turning and it was time for him to move on. Pam had recently asked that he release her and let her make her own way in the world She was able to control her urges well and she had learnt much from Eric about keeping herself safe so he was happy to give her a large sum of money and wish her well.

He was free again. He could go wherever he wished and he found himself missing the easy decadence of the Continent. These new Americans were so straight-laced, bringing with them some of the pointless conventions of the British Empire. Trans-Atlantic travel was extremely difficult for a vampire; the need to feed and find a safe resting place out of the sun was almost impossible to meet. Eric had been told of a sea captain, a man by the name of Benjamin Briggs who was not only aware of their existence but also sympathetic to them.

The story Eric had heard was that one night his young son, by the name of Arthur, had run out into the street and been plucked from under the wheels of a carriage by a stranger. The man was knocked unconscious and Briggs had ordered him carried into his house where a doctor was attending their dinner party. The doctor immediately pronounced the stranger dead and so, once all the guests had taken their leave, Briggs was preparing to send a boy to fetch someone to take the man to the county mortuary and attempt to find out who he was.

Imagine his surprise when the stranger, whose name was Thomas Gee, sat up from the couch he had been placed upon, apparently risen from the dead! At the shock of seeing this, Briggs had fallen back against the door, causing Gee's fangs to run down in response. As Eric was later told, Briggs had been afraid but not paralysingly so and had taken the time to listen to Gee's explanation. Eric thought he was very lucky that he had found one of the few vampires who would not just glamour him, at the very least, and then fade into the night. In a rare twist of fate, Gee and Briggs became firm friends and it was Gee who was the first vampire to accompany him on a voyage.

Since then Briggs had repaid what he considered a debt by offering safe passage to any vampire that came recommended to him by his friend. Providing secure and light tight sleep arrangements in return for protection whilst at sea and some work during the hours of darkness, the vampire would pay him no fee but would give his solemn word to feed only frugally from the crew and glamour them afterwards. Eric remembered from his youth that sailors are superstitious men; he could imagine how unhappy they would be to have a member of the walking dead onboard ship. As it was Briggs often took his wife and daughter with him on voyages and everyone knew that women were considered very bad luck too.

He approached Gee some few days later and was introduced to Briggs. Gee of course took a finder's fee in return; he may have been a more civilised vampire but he was certainly no fool.

Once the hubbub of the docks had quietened down he found Captain Briggs in a hotel near where the Brigantine was moored, he took him to the ship and showed him to his 'living quarters', a crate deep in her hold, double 'hulled' and completely light tight. Eric was startled to see another of his kind already there, a small swarthy man who looked to have been about 45 when he was turned. The man was introduced simply as 'Gallio'.

Eric followed Briggs back out onto the deck.

"Captain, pray excuse me, why is that you have another vampire on board ship, I assumed I was to be the only one for this voyage to Italy?"

Briggs sighed and took out his pipe, "Mr Northman, when I agreed for you to accompany us I believed that you were indeed to be the only vampire on board, but then yesterday my dear Thomas came to me with a pitiful tale of another vampire who was struggling to escape an abusive and dangerous Master. I could not fail to say yes! Besides both Gee and Gallio assure me that he is old enough not to require to feed often, as are you, so I felt that it would be no more of a, um, load on the crew than one youngster."

'_Yes and Gee gets twice the fee_,' thought Eric.

It was too late for him to make other arrangements though, not that there was even any choice in the matter, so he decided to put up with the other vampire and ignore him as much as possible over the coming weeks. There was something about this Gallio that Eric did not care for.

The following day, November 5th, they set sail from Staten Island heading for the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and Europe. Aboard on that cold and blustery day were Briggs, his wife Sarah and their two year old daughter Sophie. Young Arthur had started his schooling and was remaining behind with his aunt, in Massachusetts.

The crew comprised of seven men, not including the vampires. The first mate, Albert Richardson, and the cook were both Americans, the others; a Dane and four Germans all spoke perfect English. The voyage to Genoa was expected to be a relatively easy one; there were some reports of bad weather out in the Atlantic but nothing out of the ordinary. Briggs expected to deliver his cargo of commercial alcohol (to be sold to fortify the famous Italian wines) and return without incident.

At least that was his intention...

Everything had been going well, far better than Eric had expected. Gallio stayed out of his way and he found immense satisfaction in working on board a ship once more. Every sunset he rose slightly before the other vampire and went to the deck to begin his tasks. He revelled in the manual work after so many years of leisure; the sea air doing his dead heart good.

His age meant he did not need to feed more than once every three days or so; it was on one of the nights he was hungry that it all started to go wrong.

Eric was up near the prow of the ship; she was a fine vessel, over one hundred feet long with a beam of around 25 feet. She had recently been rebuilt after running aground and everything on board was top notch and of the best quality. Eric was dealing with the sails on the foremast when he heard a noise behind him; he turned to see Sarah Briggs, the Captain's wife.

"Good evening Madam." Eric said cautiously, he did not know if this woman knew of his nature.

"Hello Mr Northman, no need to be quite so formal, please, call me Mrs Briggs. We need to keep the formality for the rest of the crew but I am aware that you are more than a common sailor." She smiled. "My husband told me everything, after all it was my son too that dear Mr. Gee saved."

Eric considered her; he had always been a vampire of few words and he waited to see what she would say next.

"I hope you don't mind me joining you but my husband is talking below decks with some of the crew and my daughter is asleep. It can get very tedious for me, even on the shorter voyages."

"Not at all," Eric replied. He was about to turn back to the sail he was working on when he felt her hand on his arm.

"I wondered, if it is not too much of an intrusion, if I could ask you something about yourself. I find myself fascinated with the idea that someone can be dead and yet walk amongst us as if he were alive."

'_Oh dear_,' thought Eric, '_Do I really have to go through the usual questions humans have on the rare occasions they find out about us? Do I sleep in a coffin, can I turn into a bat..._'

Sarah interrupted his thoughts, "Please forgive my intrusion, I can see that I was impertinent in asking." She began to back away, heading for the hatch to take her below decks.

"Wait. I would be happy to speak with you, there may be some things that I cannot answer", he did not explain that he actually meant '_would not answer'_," but you are welcome to ask."

Sarah moved closer to him, she studied him closely, taking in his pale, chiselled face, his long golden hair tied back with a piece of leather. '_He is the exact opposite of Benjamin_,' she thought. Her husband was a small man, quite dark with his hair and beard in a style made popular by Mr. Abraham Lincoln, who had died just over ten years earlier.

"Pray tell Mr Northman," she said, "What do you think allows you to move even though you no longer live?"

'_At last_' Eric thought, '_a sensible question_.'

"An interesting query Madam and one that is very difficult for me to answer. I can only tell you what I believe, there is the world we can see and then there is one that is unexplainable. Do you have faith in the Christian God?"

"But of course."

"How, then would you explain the Mother of Christ being a virgin and yet was still delivered of a child?" he asked.

"The child was the Son of God; he caused Mary to become pregnant so that his Son could become our Saviour. It was a miracle."

Eric looked at her, "Is it not possible that me rising from my grave is not also a miracle, or even some form of other elemental magic?"

Sarah seemed to be considering this, "That could be the answer I suppose, it is as feasible as any other. The only thing I sense, no I _know_, is that it is not black magic or the result of something occult. You do not seem like a bad man to me."

'_If only she knew'_ he thought with an internal smile.

She moved closer.

"Is it true Mr Northman that your heart no longer beats?"

Eric took her hand and placed it on his chest, over his linen shirt and his dead heart.

"You are so cool to the touch," she marvelled, "but not cold like a dead body would be! Your chest is still, you do not breathe and your heart is silent." She looked at him in wonder and slid her fingers under the edge of his shirt until they rested on his bare flesh.

"So cool, so smooth," she said in a faraway voice but did not remove her hand. She seemed to collect herself and removed her eyes to his once more.

"Pray tell, is it true that when a vampire matures he does not feel the need to take sustenance every day?"

"Yes." Eric answered.

"How often do you..."

"Feed?"

She swallowed and nodded her head.

"I would prefer to take small amounts every day if I could but you do not have need to worry, I will limit myself to every three or four days whilst at sea. I will also make sure that I do not feed on any one person too much and weaken them by doing so."

"And your companion, Gallio? Does he assure the same?" she asked.

"He is not my companion. I do not know, nor do I care to know, what he does."

"I find him coarse and somewhat improper. Mr. Briggs told me I may do better by staying out of his way."

"You husband is a very wise man."

"What about you Sir? Would it serve me best to avoid you also?" There was a hint of seduction in her voice.

"Madam, I am perfectly safe." '_At the moment at least_' he thought.

"Such a pity," she replied boldly. "I have read in a story that vampires often have sexual intercourse with their victims and they prefer the blood of virgins."

"If the literature to which you refer is what I think it is, then it was written under the influence of excessive amounts of laudanum and is mainly sensationalist rubbish. I can only speak for myself, a human's level of sexual experience, male or female, makes no difference to the taste of their blood."

"And the intercourse?" she pressed.

"It is true, for us feeding and fucking are very closely linked." She did not blanch at the coarse language, as he expected her to, it seemed that he could get away with things that Gallio could not...

"I see," she moved so close that her full skirts brushed his legs, "As far as the...sex is concerned, you would sooner take a virgin into your bed?"

" I have taken virgins, on occasion," he caught her gaze, "I have to say though I prefer a more experienced bed partner, one who knows what he or she likes and how to give and receive pleasure."

Sarah's eyes widened and her lips parted slightly. She moved her hand to Eric's face, tracing her fingers along his jaw, feeling the rasp of his blond stubble. It continued its journey and slipped around the back of his neck and pulled him closer.

Eric expected her to kiss him but she did not. Instead she whispered into his ear,

"I know how to give you pleasure, Eric."

Sarah kissed his neck, her other hand ran into his hair and pulled it free of its tie.

"You are so handsome," she murmured against his skin, "Your taste and smell is simply magnificent, that is most unusual for a sea dog." She smiled.

Eric could not help but become aroused, even though he knew this felt all wrong somehow. Sarah's hand left his hair and finger walked down his chest and abdomen to the front of his trousers; she massaged the hardness contained by the thick cotton fabric.

Eric's fangs clicked down. Rather than show fear, Sarah looked at them in both delight and fascination.

"Oh, they are wondrous, so long, so white, they look so sharp." She touched each one tentatively with her finger. "Eric, my darling, please? I would like very much for you to bite me tonight."

She tilted her head to the side; her neck was already exposed by the tight bun that contained her long brown hair. Eric watched the pulse beat just under her skin, smelled the blood and heard her heart beat loud and fast. Sarah held her breath in anticipation and waiting for his bite...and found herself propelled suddenly backwards. Eric caught her hand to prevent her from falling but let it go again immediately.

"What are you doing?" she cried.

"Hush woman! Unless you wish to inform the whole crew and your husband of your planned indiscretions!" he hissed. "Your husband is loyal to my kind; he helped me for no personal gain. Would you have me repay his kindness by cuckolding him?"

"Don't tell me you didn't consider it," she spat, her whole demeanour altered by rage, "You were hard enough when I touched you, you sanctimonious prig!"

"I freely admit it. I thought of bending you over the railing, throwing your skirts over your head, tearing your under things from your body and fucking you until you took leave of your senses." He continued in a quieter tone, "Mrs. Briggs, nothing you have between your legs could entice me to dishonour a man so willing to offer me help. He thinks so much of your worth that he made me promise I would not feed from you, offering himself in your stead. It is interesting to observe how you planned to repay him."

Sarah raised her hand as if to strike him but reconsidered when she looked once again at his extended fangs.

"It is your loss, Mr Northman," she said with venom, "I am sure that the icy, dead thing between your legs couldn't satisfy a real, living woman like myself anyway. In fact I would not have even considered it but we have been so isolated in New York City because of the horse disease and the lack of carriages; and now here on this stupid boat!"

If she was looking for sympathy then she gathered none from him.

"May I suggest Madam that you look for your satisfaction with your own husband?"

Sarah huffed and then whirled around and flounced away. It was only then that Eric noticed Gallio melting away into the shadows behind the aft mast...

The following night began quietly and Captain Briggs greeted Eric in his usual cordial manner. Of course if Sarah had told him some lie about the previous evening, as Eric half expected, he could glamour Briggs into forgetting about it. He found himself glad that he did not have to. He would not care to see him hurt. Gallio of course was a different matter. Eric could not see what advantage the other vampire could gain by telling what he observed, that did not stop him from feeling uneasy; he could not wait for the next few days when they would be entering the Mediterranean en route for Genoa.

It was just past two am when Eric heard a woman, screaming. He ran towards the sound but stopped dead when confronted with the scene before him. Gallio held Sarah with his dirty hand around her throat. Sarah, holding Sophie in her arms, was struggling and screaming for all she was worth.

"Please," she sobbed, "Please let my baby go!"

In one swift movement Gallio seized the little girl by her nightdress and threw her over the side.

"There," he laughed over Sarah's screams, "She is free!"

Eric was running even before the child left the other vampire's arms. He landed with one foot on the railing and the launched himself out into space, after the falling figure. Sophie had only just hit the surface of the water when Eric snatched her to him. She didn't even sink as far as he could tell. He brought her up to his neck and she was squealing in a particularly ear-splitting way. This was something that Eric took to be a very good sign. He caught her eye.

"It is alright now little one, I have you and you are safe. Just hold onto my neck as tightly as you can and I will take you back to your Mamma before you know it."

Sophie fisted her little hands into his hair, looked at him and said 'Yes. You Angel?"

Eric laughed and shook his head no. "I just work for your Papa."

"Papa a Captain!" the child replied, solemnly.

It was harder than he expected to take to flight out of water, a child in his arms and his clothes treacherously heavy with sea water, but it was only a few seconds later that his boots hit the wooden deck.

And what a sight greeted him...

Sarah Briggs lay on the floor; her throat ripped open. Eric was certain she was dead. Gallio stood over her body, his face, hands and shirt sodden with her blood. The crew had obviously adapted quickly; they surrounded him with flaming torches that they had made from oars and oil soaked sailcloth. They held Gallio off for the moment but Eric knew that wouldn't last long. He shouted to Briggs to take his daughter and walked towards the ring of humans surrounding the vampire.

"What is the meaning of this?" he thundered, making those closest to him shrink back in fear.

Gallio looked at him and laughed. "Who are you to question me Northman? Just because you have lost your fangs and play nice with the bloodbags does not mean the rest of us wish to follow your example!"

"You are clearly far more stupid than you look. By slaughtering this woman and this crew you will have cut off our kind from the one reliable way to travel between Europe and the New World. You were well fed, where is the need in this?"

"Stupid am I? Yes I may be well fed but when I approached this _lady_," he pushed Sarah's body with his foot and Eric had to prevent Briggs from attacking him, "when I approached her for a meal she refused me. Why? She had been offering you far more last night when she was rubbing your prick and begging you to bite her!"

Eric ignored the cry of pain from Briggs.

"You killed her because you are _jealous_?" he regarded Gallio coldly.

"I do not need a reason to kill! I am vampire and these _things_ are our prey! I had heard many great things about the great Viking vampire and then what do I find when I finally meet him? Turning down some whore who was desperate for you to fuck her, just because you felt it would dishonour her husband!" Gallio made pretend weeping noises and looked at Eric in disgust.

Eric motioned for the men to fall back behind him.

"I pity you; even now you have your humans to back you up. I took you for a warrior but it seems you reputation is as limp as your cock!"

Eric flew at Gallio, roaring in anger and the sailors all hid behind whatever they could, crying with fear at the sight of these two terrible creatures tearing at each other with fangs and hands curled into claws. As Eric suspected, the other vampire was younger and far weaker, in a matter of minutes he had Gallio backed up against the mast. Just as he was about to strike for the final time the other reached behind him and threw a handful of tar into Eric's eyes. Maddened by the pain and unable to see, Eric fell back and tried to clear his vision, he heard the snap of breaking wood and in the second he could see again he saw Gallio coming towards him with a section of broken oar. It was too late; he was about to be staked.

Just before the wood pierced his chest he heard a scream from his left and a blade flashed down between them. Gallio fell back, his right arm missing below the elbow; the stump gushing blood in huge freshets. Briggs stood to one side, panting; a sword held down by his leg. Before the bleeding could stop, Eric once more flew at Gallio who was scrambling away across the deck, trying to make for the rail.

Eric let loose a cry that had not been heard in hundreds of years and went after him, taking both of them over the rail and into the ocean below. As they both surfaced Eric got a grip on Gallio and began to bite him in a frenzy that even a shark would be impressed by. When his opponent was weakened through blood loss and barely moving Eric looked him in the eye,

"Who is weeping now Gallio? You whole body bleeds tears." With that Eric grasped his head and twisted it from his shoulders, watching as the ashes floated away on the black waves.

Sarah's body was wrapped in a clean sail and tied with rope, Briggs said a few words over her and then the first mate and Eric lowered her into the ocean. Briggs had been resistant to this; he wanted to take her body on with them to Genoa to give her a proper Christian burial. Richardson had pointed out this was unwise, they were sailing into an area of high temperatures and the body would not fare well; the sailors feared disease.

Eric pointed out to him there was no way her injuries could be explained should her death be investigated. They would place the blame on Briggs and he would be hung, Sophie and Arthur orphaned, or one of his men would get the blame and suffer a similar fate. Briggs agreed that it was not worth the risk, he also had a fear that, if she were buried, she would rise from her grave a vampire, Eric did not disabuse him of this notion but he knew by the way Briggs spit out the word 'vampire' that his sympathy with his kind had come to an end.

He could not blame him.

So Sarah's body was disposed of. Eric thought about what to do with the others, of course he could glamour them all into thinking that Sarah had fallen overboard and they had been unable to save her. Talking to one of the crew though, he was told that Sarah had made attempts to seduce them all and had many conquests in New York. Eric worried that if this came out after her death then it may cause the authorities to look more closely at the incident and find some evidence of her death.

Furthermore he had discovered that Briggs had written about both vampires in his journal, although not identifying them for what they were, both were mentioned several times. There was no way Eric could leave the book behind when he left the ship but to take it would arouse even more suspicion.

He decided that the only way out of this mess was to remove the Captain, his daughter and the crew from the ship and glamour them so they remembered nothing, not who they were, what ship they had been aboard, nothing at all. It was not ideal but he could not think of any other way and dawn was only a few hours away.

He made the sailors help him clean all Sarah's blood off the deck and erase all signs of a struggle. He gave each man a share of all the money he could find in Gallio's belongings and some of his own but instructed them not to take any personal possessions of their own from their quarters. He set fire to what was left of the other vampire's things and pitched them into the water.

Eric sat on the main deck in the dark. By looking at the maps and studying the stars as he used to do as a young man he determined they were less than a day from the nearest land. If he hurried he could fly there before dawn and go to ground. Finally he destroyed the compass and stopped the ships clock. Briefly going down into the hold, he drained nine barrels of alcohol and when he returned to the deck he left two of the three hatches open. He could only hope that this would mystify whoever found the ship even more.

All nine of the humans aboard were glamoured until they did not even know their own names. Eric was nothing if not thorough and he even erased the memory of the little girl he saved from drowning. She looked at him with such trust and Eric was reminded of his own daughters, now long lost to death. It was only then that he felt guilt about what he was about to do but he told himself he really had no choice, the secret of his existence had to be protected at all costs. He could not be the vampire that confirmed their presence to the humans. They were already so suspicious with their stories and folk tales.

He tied the lifeboat to the stern of the boat, using the peak halyard that was normally used to hoist the main sail, and one by one he instructed the crew to climb down into it. Inside he had placed enough food and water to last them a week, he decided that the fact the ship was stocked with food that was untouched would cause more consternation should she be found adrift. He cut the halyard and watched the lanterns on the lifeboat as it was rowed off into the night. He could only hope that they found safe harbour and lived long and uneventful lives.

He thought of all the families that would be devastated at their loss, especially little Arthur at home in the United States. He shook himself, what was done was done. He could have saved Sarah Briggs but her child would have been lost. He could second guess his decision for the rest of his life but it was made and the child lived because of it.

Eric surveyed the deathly quiet ship. All that was left to do was to pitch two of the pumps into the ocean along with the sextant and the marine chronometer. He had an idea this would make it appear that the crew had taken them, maybe to help them find their way to the mainland.

In Briggs' cabin he picked up the Captain's journal. Although Eric had spent 900 years biting back his emotions he felt such sadness when he read the entries, how Briggs was looking forward to spending some time in Genoa whilst the cargo was being unloaded, what he hoped for his next voyage. Eric pocketed the journal and took off into the night.

A knocking on his door bought him back to the present. Pam stood in the doorway, a vision in black leather and spike heels.

"McCabe Worthington has finally arrived, I made him aware that the Sheriff does not appreciate lateness and he is suitably terrified." She grinned at Eric's chuckle. "Shall I show him in?"

"I don't think so Pam, let him stand out there for a while and wait. He is not to drink any True Blood or talk to anyone. Tell him I shall see him when I am good and ready." He could hear her laugh as she walked away. '_She really is an exceptional child_,' he thought, '_I missed her all the nights we were apart.'_

His thoughts drifted back to that night so many years ago, would it have turned out differently had Pam been with him? Sookie had a saying '_Hindsight is perfect vision_' and his beloved was right. He forced his mind away from the past and tried to think about the present. He thought one last time of flying away that night, pausing in the air to look back at the vessel that had been the scene of so much trouble.

He hoped that was the last time he laid eyes on the '_Mary Celeste_'...and it was.

**The End**

**Author's note:** For those of you who worked out the surprise before the end, well done! For anyone who does not know the story of the Mary Celeste or would like to know more about her there are several books on the subject and of course good old wiki.

www dot en dot wikipedia dot org/wiki/Mary_Celeste

The story is of an American owned Brigantine sailing ship that was discovered, in 1872, heading for the Strait of Gibraltar. She was completely seaworthy apart from the parts missing that I mention in the story. There was no sign of violence and the ship had enough food and water for six months. No one has ever discovered what happened to the crew and the Mary Celeste remains one of the major mysteries of the modern age. I think my explanation is as plausible as a sea monster or E.T


End file.
